Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Smashing the patriarchy is a brutal business

The Poet Empress: A Novel by Shen Tao

by 4 Comments

I picked up this novel based on Narfna’s recommendation, and I’m glad I did. This is an intense fantasy novel about power, magic, literacy and women. And as Narfna says, it is NOT romantasy, no matter how it might be marketed. This is Shen Tao’s debut novel, and she warns readers that it contains violence, sexual abuse, and torture, and some of this involves children. It can be a lot but if you can handle it, it’s worth the ride. The Poet Empress is set […]

Where Lovecraft Meets Tradecraft

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

by Leave a Comment

Charlie Stross finished up The Laundry Files series earlier this year, so I decided I should do a bit of a re-read.  It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve read some of these, so I thought a little brush up couldn’t hurt.  But I have to mention something weird about my friends first; when I did a re-read of the Obernewtyn series a while back, I mentioned that I started reading them based off a friend’s recommendation. And this friend didn’t do me the […]

Through a wizened glass

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

by Leave a Comment

Wizard and Glass is number four in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and this is my second trip to the Tower. As a long Constant Reader, I always had mixed feelings about this book when I thought back on it. Most of the story takes place with Roland telling his ka-tet about his childhood and his first love, Susan, the girl in the window. It tells the story of three boys who are sent away, supposedly to keep them safe from being caught up in […]

“Free speech may be part of the ideal of any revolution, but soon enough it becomes free speech only where the government approves of it.”

Scarlet (Scarlet Revolution #1) by Genevieve Cogman

by Leave a Comment

It is 1793 and the French Revolution is in full swing. Vampires, who are as usual, portrayed as rich and aristocratic (they’re blood-sucking leeches who also happen to be corpses; how is this not the White Trash Central group? Though yes, even without being vampiric they’d still be leeches; they are rich after all.) are the largest group to slake the guillotine’s thirst. Luckily for the 1%, The mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, a disguised British noble, and his League are heroically rescuing dozens of aristocrats from […]

“Yes, I suppose this will teach us all not to prioritize murder before drunkenness,” said I.

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

by 2 Comments

This is not the story you think it is. These are not the characters you think they are. This is not the book you are expecting. (ain’t that the truth?) In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings in a well-regulated truce. And those human beings remain all too human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent. Murderers still stalk the streets of this London too. But this London has […]

“As the sensation rose, you filled with contempt for a stranger’s insanity. You had enough of your own to contend with.”

Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #2) by Tamsyn Muir

by 2 Comments

She answered the Emperor’s call (as if she ever had a choice). She arrived with her arts, her wits, her neverending death wish, and her only friend (not that she’d admit to that before it was all too late.) Oh, your cavaliers are young? And they fight? How classic! So jejune!-but that would not have been the wild and confident fuck-you of the Ninth House. The Ninth House character, she was forced to admit, had always been low on wild and confident fucks. In victory, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo